coz i know for sure that if it
- could be digitally-copied
- needed by people
- published today
- and there’s thing called “internet”

then creating my stuff would have been only 10% and so-easy-part, the rest 90% is others and definitely-not-under-my-control.

got it?

The people who steal the music do so and try to justify it by saying it is their right. In reality these people are greedy and don’t want to pay for it if they can get it free. They want more material. This is no worse then the company owners who try to justify their greed by the so called “losses” from piracy.

On the other side of the fence are the rich stock holders and CEO’s and whoever else, who have tons of money, and the more they get the more they want. They therefore try to gain even more money by saying they would have made so-and-so amount if it weren’t due to the “losses,” and in turn spend their life trying to gain every dime they can even if they already have millions.

In the end both sides are greedy bastards who will lie, cheat, and steal to get their way, with each trying to justify it. And if the positions were switched, everything would be the same. The ones who were claiming it is their “right” to have the music will then turn and call it “piracy that must be stopped” in order to fill their pockets. And the ones who would have owned parts of these companies would then be the ones claiming it’s their “right” to jack someone else’s music. It’s pathetic to watch the crooks on both sides argue.

However, as I, nor any of my direct compatriots profit from the endevor, I really can’t be bothered to care.

Exactly. I only get $20 allowance a week (and I have to admit, I’m all the fail at saving money). That’s why I’ve downloading all 5 seasons of Angel instead of paying the $100 some odd for them.

I’m currently looking for a job. Once I get that job (and have my money taken away by the gas company, car insurance company and medical insurance company), if I have enough money left, I’m totally planning on buying the DVDs.

Now, as far as music, I have a *huge* issue with paying for it (that’s no longer an issue, thanks to iTunes :D). I feel that if I am to pay for a music file, any music file, I should be able to rip or burn it as many times as I want, as often as I want and *anywhere* I want. Until iTunes came out with the DRM free MP3s, I saw no reason to waste money on them.

Also: Artists won’t get money for me for their concerts. I find concerts rather boring, and hate the live performances just as much. The screaming fangirls ruin the whole thing for me. That, and how goddamn loud it is, combined with the screaming fangirls. Yes, I know you love The Wonders. Now sit down and STFU, because I WANT TO LISTEN TO THEIR GODDAMN SONG!! I don’t want to hear you screaming “OH!! I LOVE YOU!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!”

If I were to pay for a concert, I’d prefer *not* to hear people screaming, kthanx. If I want to hear people screaming, I can go to WalMart. If I go to a concert, I go to hear *the band* or *the artist* perform. Not their screaming fangirls.

Also: I download files, but I try not to upload them when I can (yes, I’m the dreaded leecher). I assure you, if I did not live in the US (MPAA/RIAA capital of the universe), I’d seed every time I turned on my external drive. But because I live in the US, I have to be more wary of some pompous company suing me because I allowed someone from Russia to download a whole season of their show, that the person in Russia can’t pay for because the paying sites are only for Americans. End run-on sentence.

No, no one looses money. It’s just that they don’t gain what they potentially might have gained.

If they were going to gain any money from me, wouldn’t I just pay for it in the *first* place, instead of downloading it for free?

Also: I’m willing to pay $25 for a CD, when the record companies stop wasting space with the ‘default’ format and switch to MP3 and fill up all 703MB of the space. I see no point in paying $25 for 10 songs when that *exact* same CD can hold up to 150, 200 maybe 350 at most. (I think it’s 200, right?)

However, music? Bite me. While it is ‘wrong’, I don’t particularly care. If people my age were downloading music with the intent to re-sell, or redistribute for a profit, then there would be a problem. However, as I, nor any of my direct compatriots profit from the endevor, I really can’t be bothered to care.

There you have it.

I think most people feel a slight twinge of guilt if they DL something they know they would and could have paid for (which was distributed in a good timely quality fair way) but instead chose to DL and keep their money. (though in most cases the astonishing soulless greed demonstrated by the wealthy corporations and wealth of many artists manages to significantly lessen such twinges)

The idea that because you exist you must purchase our product and not doing so is stealing is rather abhorrent.

Also you can legally copy patents or designs for your own use and if I could materialize stuff at will I would have no issues with making Buggati Veyrons and Rolex’s materialize for my own use.
I wouldn’t shed a tear for De Beers as I make diamonds appear.

Actually that’s how the law used to be, until January 1 2006 when Lex Karpela came into effect and made downloading illegal too. Perhaps the kids haven’t been following it. But not that anyone follows that law here -.-

It has been proven in science that although IQ tests do project overall intelligence, Your IQ AIN’T a determining factor of your “smartness” so to say.

do some more reading, check out some solid information on IQ THEORY then maybe you will be a bit less of……. AN INSECURE ASS HOLE.

Heck, even the RIAA themselves are unable to prosecute for theft, they prosecute you for copyright infringement.

So would people please stop saying that its stealing when it isn’t. Its IP infringement.

I also wish that people would stop saying that an illegally shared file is a lost sale. It isn’t it. It is only a POTENTIAL lost sale. As it is impossible to ascertain at what price that POTENTIAL lost sale would become an actual sale then the RIAA and the music industry are talking out of their arse when they say they lost x amount of revenue.

* one group that goes “omfg, gag lool” and generally doesn’t contribute

* one group that goes “fuck the media companies, hell fuck everybody! ohyeahIdownloadhah”

* another group that goes “you are wrong, stealing is wrong ,have thee no shame?!”

* a new group which arguments against it with intelligent arguments

then we have the following sub-ingredients which may or may not be a part:

* the annoying joker person that makes a mockery of the thread (that would be me)

* a comparison with fascist or nazism policies

* bad analogies to filesharing and how it’s illegal because “it’s NOT like copying your car! it’s nooot!”

* even worse arguments of laws and whatnot

* pure namecalling

so, in the future, I urge everyone to stop participating in these threads, because they are boring, pointless and basically a rehash of every other thread like it. Nobody ever reaches any kind of conclusion, or solution to the problem either, which is rather funny to note.

My solution though, would be simple: outlaw media companies and make media free by law. That would force the artists to seek out other ways of revenue, or quit, which is the best thing, because the world has a huge media underground which is far better than it’s commercial counterpart.

About concerts being expensive. Even if not everyone wants to pay the price, a lot of people will still come. The price is probably high because the artists are quite popular. My point is that concerts is their main source of income and they won’t die without their cd-sales, which i guess the big corporations take the most money of anyway.

[quote comment="147183"]“Ahh,
there is hope for the future at last.

Just wait until those kids take over power.”

No, there isn’t. These children are just cheap, they will be as money hungry and as stupid as the batch we are currently on. There is no change in the human genome. There are very few people who download illicitly for a purpose other than to save money.
And even fewer who can understand it and debate for it without looking like an idiot, saying that they are already too rich as their only excuse[/quote]

If you want better excuses maybe you should not debate with the kids then. Do you consider yourself as money hungry and stupid as you seem to describe both the kids and older generations? Whether greed or stupidity is a part of the human genome belongs to another discussion because i don’t see how it is connected to file sharing.

File sharing is a result of how internet and p2p technology have changed the way in which people interact with information as Agmar so nicely put it. File sharing is illegal because of the laws which are out-of-date and obsolete. It should not be compared to stealing, however that still doesn’t make it morally right, that is what the minds of the people will define. But one thing that is sure is that people will continue to share and the peoples opinions will reflect in the laws because the laws are shaped after society. When society changes the laws will have to change too.

This will probably be my last post here. I’ve enjoyed this discussion too and you’ve given me a lot to think about. Bye and thanks!

Just wait until those kids take over power.”

No, there isn’t. These children are just cheap, they will be as money hungry and as stupid as the batch we are currently on. There is no change in the human genome. There are very few people who download illicitly for a purpose other than to save money.
And even fewer who can understand it and debate for it without looking like an idiot, saying that they are already too rich as their only excuse

Anyway, i have enjoyed the discussion, especially that it seems to have taken place amongst mature individuals without any of the normal name calling and trolling I’ve seen elsewhere. For now, I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I respect your opinions thus far and indeed you have given me some new outlooks on the whole topic.

As I said, the matter is not really so black and white for myself either. I have downloaded songs or tv shows that were not made available to me through what I consider legal means (itunes or emusic). I do not mind paying for digital copies of songs at all. Same with DVD’s.

I don’t necessarily agree totally with your own outlooks, but i do see your arguments and accept them as an alternate viewpoint. I’d keep going back and forth, but I am spent for now! It has been fun engaging in this discussion. Thanks!

Ok, you lost money; So what? Don’t do it again. Why should you use the law to guarentee your profits?

[quote]If I write a book about teaching, I’d hope to get compensated by people buying it.[/quote]

And you still would without copyright.

Just you might have to make sure the book is good and not overpriced.

[quote]To get people to do things just for the sake of doing things without compensation somehow is not going to happen right away. [/quote]

It happens in the file sharing world, as well as many other places.

People spend their time and often money to make releases. They don’t get paid for it, they just like doing it for the spread of free culture.

Also another example is open source. A great deal of open source software development is not for profit, but instead about making the best software possible.

[quote]No, of course not, you go because you need the paycheck. And while some people love their jobs, take their paycheck away, and see how long they continue to do it. [/quote]

You are in the delusion that artists would go broke without copyright.

People will always want to go to concerts.

I like the analogy of making a copy of a can of soda. Here’s the thing though, when you copy the soda, you have to take your OWN ingredients and mix them together just right. With a song or data file, the technology allows you to just make a copy. What if you had to play the music yourself to make a copy? What if to make a copy of the song to share YOU yourself had to perform it? The soda? You’re copying it, anyone can) but you are actually creating it again from scratch from a recipe with all new materials. You’re not taking the contents of the can and turning it into a new copy. The song? You are just taking it and copying it. IF you had to do it all again yourself and create the song from scratch, guitars vocals and all, then I could see it being allright to copy. It’s more like a cover version of a song then. The soda is like a cover version of the soda.[/quote]

When i download a song a new identical song is being created from scratch from a recipe with new materials, materials being a lot of one’s and zero’s.
If i did it all myself and created the song from scratch, guitars vocals and all, it would not be an identical copy of the song, it would be a cover as you said. But since sounds is vibrations, i could use my mystery-device to analyze the song and create a new series of vibrations identical to the first and thus the new copy of the song would indeed be an exact copy. The analogy with the clothes is better in this case because it is easier to create an exact copy with the right skills and tools.

[quote comment="146937"]
What about copying a book? IF we photocopy a book and pass it around to friends, that is considered illegal as well I believe. I dont think many people do this because it is a lot tougher to copy a 400 page book then it is to copy a 3 mb file.

The basic idea is the same though.

It’s illegal as well.
[/quote]

I have thought of that too. It happened with the last Harry Potter book. I’m tired and can’t come up with anything about books now but i shall quote this interesting comment by Agmar just because:

[quote comment="146603"]
As an example consider the printing press, arguably, before digital data, the printing press was the technology that allowed more people access to information, taking it out of the exclusive control of medival monestaries. imagine monestaries used their lobbying power to outlaw the printing press, so they could maintain their control over information dispersal.
This is analagous to the various media companies imposing DRM restrictions, harsh copyright laws, etc on filesharing.[/quote]

[quote comment="146937"]
I do believe that an artist has a right to ask for compensation from a song, whether it be a file or cd. Again, no one has really said much about my example of making my own song, and hoping to get my cut of the 99 cents every time it sells on iTunes. IF it sells 1000 times, I get a cut of that. If one person buys it and shares it, I have lost out on a lot of money.
[/quote]

True that they might lose money from filesharing, but they might gain also. If an artist would share his songs for free, willingly or unwillingly, that artist might reach out to a lot more people that would not have bought his/her music anyway. That would increase the artists popularity and draw more people to his/hers live performances which IS the artists main form of revenue.

[quote comment="146937"]
It doesn’t matter if one is rich or not, if they would like to get compensated, they should be if people like their stuff. Painters, authors, musicians, whatever. They deserve to get paid. Do they deserve as much money as they do? Probably not. I take a lot of issues with the sports stars getting the million dollar contracts, while our teachers (myself included) make next to nothing. If I write a book about teaching, I’d hope to get compensated by people buying it. No I wouldn’t be in it for just the money, but without the money, I’d be broke and unable to live.
[/quote]

We have this stupid “cassette-fee” which is a fee on all empty storage-media like dvd’s and mp3’s that are sold here in sweden. It’s purpose is to compensate the copyright owners for when a private person makes a legal copy for his/her own usage.

I don’t think anyone should be compensated just because people like their stuff. If they want money they should produce an object or a service of some kind that people are willing to pay for. in the case of musicians, it’s live performances, not plastic disks with a few songs on. They should instead give away the songs for free as a means to spread their music, increase their popularity and draw people to their concerts, which i repeat is their main stream of income.

[quote comment="146937"]
Thinking that artists should just be happy their stuff is out there and being seen, is a very Utopian view of a world we don’t live in and won’t for an extremely long time.
[/quote]

Ask an artist where his/her income comes from. It’s certainly not 100% album sales. Someone should have made a survey about that to see just how much impact file sharing has and could have on the artist income, not the fat music corporations who is desperately fighting file sharing to secure their profit instead of adapting and actually secure their profit.

Now i will go too sleep since the clock is already 01 am here. Goodnight, although you may not read it until it’s morning again.